“Are we supposed to infer from this that Jason didn’t set up this whole Calvinesque scenario?”
I think we *are* supposed to think he set it up but he is either trying to convince his friend it is a natural occurrence or he has set up a tableau where his utterance is part of the scene as the joke or a point somewhere on the gradient.
I imagine he said it up, called his friend over, as the friend takes it in, Jason poses and then emotes “I’m starting to think snow men can’t read”. … that is… his utterance is part of the tableau..
Woozy has it. Also, I think Jason has been living next to Calvin for too long. On the other hand, unlike Calvin, he came up with a gag that did not require anywhere near as much work as Calvin’s usuage do.
@ lazarusjohn – It would be charitable to assume that the name of Liō’s newspaper was nothing more than a superfluous reference to Peter Parker’s “The Daily Bugle“. Nevertheless, in the current zealously overheated political climate, one cannot help but wonder whether the first syllable was supposed to “mean” something. It is irrelevant whether Tatulli actually intended to make a political comment (as I would have assumed if it had been Douglas Adams), it is simply an unfortunate distraction from the utterly non-political topic of the actual comic.
P.S. As has been said before, some comics require less thought than some of us are capable of exerting.
People have gotten self-conscious about saying that one thing trumps another. However, this consciousness seems to play out for different people as over use or avoidance.
Personally I would rather hear that A defeats B, or overrules it, or outweighs it,..
@ larK – Correct. Ooops again (I feel even sillier).
P.S. Of course, if Douglas Adams had had anything to do with this strip, it would have been even more disturbing, because he died in 2001.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Perhaps they wandered over to Calvin’s house.
But I don’t know how they got there without leaving tracks. And they themselves are sinking in.
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Stay on the surface of the joke; don’t get sucked into the quicksand of overthinking it.
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And even if the snowmen can’t read, wouldn’t they see what happened to the predecessors on the scene?
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“Are we supposed to infer from this that Jason didn’t set up this whole Calvinesque scenario?”
I think we *are* supposed to think he set it up but he is either trying to convince his friend it is a natural occurrence or he has set up a tableau where his utterance is part of the scene as the joke or a point somewhere on the gradient.
I imagine he said it up, called his friend over, as the friend takes it in, Jason poses and then emotes “I’m starting to think snow men can’t read”. … that is… his utterance is part of the tableau..
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Woozy has it. Also, I think Jason has been living next to Calvin for too long. On the other hand, unlike Calvin, he came up with a gag that did not require anywhere near as much work as Calvin’s usuage do.
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Meanwhile, on the same page of the comics in the Washington Post:
https://assets.amuniversal.com/9d8edc3009af0138da33005056a9545d
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I saw that and thought, ‘Too soon.’
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I find the name of Liō‘s newspaper somewhat disturbing (it wouldn‘t have been so surprising if it had shown up in Dilbert).
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Jason’s friend is his partner-in-crime. I don’t think he’d ever try conning him in this way, or that he could if he wanted to.
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“Jason’s friend is his partner-in-crime. I don’t think he’d ever try conning him in this way, or that he could if he wanted to.”
It’s a tableau. “Hey, check this out. You watching? Okay…. ‘I’m starting to thing that Snowmen can’t read’… Did you get it? Was that funny?”
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@Kilby: Why disturbing?
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My first thought was what Karl said, that it looked like a lot less work than Calvin always put in.
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In order to fully appreciate the Liō strip in Phil Smith III’s posting, you may want to refresh your memory of the final Calvin and Hobbes strip:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/12/31
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@ lazarusjohn – It would be charitable to assume that the name of Liō’s newspaper was nothing more than a superfluous reference to Peter Parker’s “The Daily Bugle“. Nevertheless, in the current zealously overheated political climate, one cannot help but wonder whether the first syllable was supposed to “mean” something. It is irrelevant whether Tatulli actually intended to make a political comment (as I would have assumed if it had been Douglas Adams), it is simply an unfortunate distraction from the utterly non-political topic of the actual comic.
P.S. As has been said before, some comics require less thought than some of us are capable of exerting.
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People have gotten self-conscious about saying that one thing trumps another. However, this consciousness seems to play out for different people as over use or avoidance.
Personally I would rather hear that A defeats B, or overrules it, or outweighs it,..
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Given that it’s dated 2008, you’re overthinking.
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Thanks, Dave – I feel extremely silly, but also very relieved (and Andréa was even more correct – eleven years so – when she wrote “Too soon!“).
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I’ll just mention that I’m pretty sure you meant Scott Adams of Dilbert and not the late Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame.
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@ larK – Correct. Ooops again (I feel even sillier).
P.S. Of course, if Douglas Adams had had anything to do with this strip, it would have been even more disturbing, because he died in 2001.
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Of course the snowman couldn’t read the sign…it’s facing the wrong way.
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